Trump says US will ‘run’ Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro seized 

US President Donald Trump says the United States will “run” Venezuela until a political transition can take place, just hours after US forces bombed the South American country and “captured” its president, Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking during a news conference on Saturday, Trump said the US would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”.

“We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” he said.

The Trump administration launched attacks on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in the early hours of Saturday after a months-long pressure campaign against Maduro’s government.

That campaign included US seizures of oil tankers off the Venezuelan coast, as well as deadly attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean that were widely denounced as extrajudicial killings.

Washington had accused the Venezuelan leader, who has been in power since 2013, of having ties to drug cartels – a claim rejected by Maduro, who said the US was working to depose him and take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

During Saturday’s news conference, Trump said “very large United States oil companies” would move into Venezuela to “fix the badly broken … oil infrastructure and start making money for the country”.

He added that his administration’s actions “will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent and safe”.

The Trump administration has defended the “capture” of Maduro by saying the left-wing leader faced drug-related charges in the US.

Trump earlier said the Venezuelan president – who was taken into US custody along with his wife, Cilia Flores – was being transferred to New York to face those charges.

‘Illegal abduction’

But legal experts, world leaders and Democratic Party lawmakers in the US have condemned the administration’s actions as a violation of international law.

“Attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos, and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on X.

Ben Saul, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, slammed what he called Washington’s “illegal abduction” of Maduro. “I condemn the US’ illegal aggression against Venezuela,” Saul wrote on social media.

A spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the situation, describing the US’s actions in Venezuela as setting “a dangerous precedent”.

“The Secretary-General continues to emphasize the importance of full respect – by all – of international law, including the UN Charter. He’s deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected,” Guterres’s office said in a statement.

Earlier on Saturday, Venezuela’s defence minister had released a defiant statement in response to the US attacks, urging people to remain united.

“We will not negotiate; we will not give up,” Vladimir Padrino Lopez said in a statement, stressing that Venezuela’s independence is not up for negotiations. “We must maintain calm and [be] united in order to prevail in these dire moments.”

Uncertainty prevails

It remains unclear how exactly the US plans to “run” Venezuela – and how long the purported transitional period will last.

During Saturday’s news conference, Trump said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.

“She was sworn in as president just a little while ago,” Trump told reporters. “She had a long conversation with [Rubio], and she said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need.’ I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.”

There was no immediate comment from the Venezuelan authorities on Trump’s claims.

Harlan Ullman, a former US naval officer, told Al Jazeera that “the notion of America taking over Venezuela is going to explode in our faces.”

“When Trump says, ‘We’re going to run the country’ – We’re not capable of running America, how are we going to be able to run Venezuela?” Ullman said.

“I do not believe that we have a plan for dealing with Venezuela,” he added. “A country is extraordinarily complex. We lack the knowledge, understanding and all the logistics to do this.”